"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."
Edmund Burke. What happened on this Day in History?

Monday, August 13, 2012

This Day in History: Aug 13, 1961: Berlin is divided

Shortly after midnight on this day in 1961, East German
soldiers begin laying down barbed wire and bricks as a barrier between
Soviet-controlled East Berlin and the democratic western section of the
city.

After World War II,
defeated Germany was divided into Soviet, American, British and French
zones of occupation. The city of Berlin, though technically part of the
Soviet zone, was also split, with the Soviets taking the eastern part of
the city. After a massive Allied airlift in June 1948 foiled a Soviet
attempt to blockade West Berlin, the eastern section was drawn even more
tightly into the Soviet fold. Over the next 12 years, cut off from its
western counterpart and basically reduced to a Soviet satellite, East
Germany saw between 2.5 million and 3 million of its citizens head to
West Germany in search of better opportunities. By 1961, some 1,000 East
Germans--including many skilled laborers, professionals and
intellectuals--were leaving every day.

In August, Walter Ulbricht, the Communist leader of East Germany, got
the go-ahead from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to begin the sealing
off of all access between East and West Berlin. Soldiers began the work
over the night of August 12-13, laying more than 100 miles of barbed
wire slightly inside the East Berlin border. The wire was soon replaced
by a six-foot-high, 96-mile-long wall of concrete blocks, complete with
guard towers, machine gun posts and searchlights. East German officers
known as Volkspolizei ("Volpos") patrolled the Berlin Wall day and night.

Many Berlin residents on that first morning found themselves suddenly
cut off from friends or family members in the other half of the city.
Led by their mayor, Willi Brandt, West Berliners demonstrated against
the wall, as Brandt criticized Western democracies, particularly the United States, for failing to take a stand against it. President John F. Kennedy
had earlier said publicly that the United States could only really help
West Berliners and West Germans, and that any kind of action on behalf
of East Germans would only result in failure.

The Berlin Wall was one of the most powerful and iconic symbols of the Cold War.
In June 1963, Kennedy gave his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a
Berliner") speech in front of the Wall, celebrating the city as a symbol
of freedom and democracy in its resistance to tyranny and oppression.
The height of the Wall was raised to 10 feet in 1970 in an effort to
stop escape attempts, which at that time came almost daily. From 1961 to
1989, a total of 5,000 East Germans escaped; many more tried and
failed. High profile shootings of some would-be defectors only
intensified the Western world's hatred of the Wall.

Finally, in the late 1980s,
East Germany, fueled by the decline of the Soviet Union, began to
implement a number of liberal reforms. On November 9, 1989, masses of
East and West Germans alike gathered at the Berlin Wall and began to
climb over and dismantle it. As this symbol of Cold War repression was
destroyed, East and West Germany became one nation again, signing a
formal treaty of unification on October 3, 1990.